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Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

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Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#11

Post by jobeirne »

thinkcomp wrote: post #6

This is simply ridiculous. The author clearly hasn't filled out IRS Form 1120S lately, or any other tax form that actually might be applicable to entrepreneurs. Furthermore, I don't really care if angel investors and venture capitalists have to pay more taxes on their successful investments. There's a difference between investing and inventing. In regard to health care, adding more tax incentives (read loopholes), th…

Health care is not a human right. It is not my obligation to make sure that you survive.

Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#12

Post by anamax »

ardit33 wrote: post #5
uuilly wrote: post #2

I was wondering about this. When I first heard his tax plan I didn't think much one way or another. Then I thought, wait! I'm trying to raise money from the super rich!

Usual republican fearmongering. as Marc Cuban said "No self respected businessman/ entrepenour wakes up a day and says I am not going to build a business and try to make millions b/c my marginal tax rate is %35 instead of %25". If that extra money taxed gets used for something useful such as building High Speed Rail in California, or jump-starting alternative fuels technology, then it is a win win situation for the e…

> for something useful such as building High Speed Rail in California

According to http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20080121152955... , the system can't pay back the bonds that are currently on the ballot, bonds that cover less than half of the projected construction costs. Since such projections almost always overestimate revenues and underestimate construction costs, the real gap will be even larger.

Some of the tricks used to get the revenues up include high-rises in Fresno and other central CA cities over the train station. That makes a lot of sense in NYC where land is at a premium, but Fresno?

There's a reason why the ballot statement says that the operating costs "[operating] costs would be at least partially offset by revenue from fares paid by passengers" and doesn't mention interest and principle.

I can't find a breakdown for the operating costs on this version of the project. The last time I saw such a breakdown, the projected salaries and benefits of the folks running the trains exceeded the projected revenues....

If high-speed rail in CA made financial sense, why wouldn't a for-profit enterprise be interested in doing it?

Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#15

Post by andreyf »

anamax wrote: post #12
ardit33 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usual republican fearmongering. as Marc Cuban said "No self respected businessman/ entrepenour wakes up a day and says I am not going to build a business and try to make millions b/c my marginal tax rate is %35 instead of %25". If that extra money taxed gets used for something useful such as building High Speed Rail in California, or jump-starting alternative fuels technology, then it is a win win situation for the e…

> for something useful such as building High Speed Rail in California According to http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20080121152955... , the system can't pay back the bonds that are currently on the ballot, bonds that cover less than half of the projected construction costs. Since such projections almost always overestimate revenues and underestimate construction costs, the real gap will be even larger. S…

If high-speed rail in CA made financial sense, why wouldn't a for-profit enterprise be interested in doing it?

Because there are externalities which a private company can't benefit from, but that people benefit from.

Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#16

Post by maxklein »

jobeirne wrote: post #11
thinkcomp wrote: post #6

This is simply ridiculous. The author clearly hasn't filled out IRS Form 1120S lately, or any other tax form that actually might be applicable to entrepreneurs. Furthermore, I don't really care if angel investors and venture capitalists have to pay more taxes on their successful investments. There's a difference between investing and inventing. In regard to health care, adding more tax incentives (read loopholes), th…

Health care is not a human right. It is not my obligation to make sure that you survive.

Humans are successful because we don't leave our dead, sick, wounded or crippled behind. We won because, instead of doing like other animals and letting the weak or old die alone, we continue to help them and learn from them.

We help other humans who are too weak to be helped. It's part of our primal human nature. When you say that it's not your obligation to make sure I survive, you are saying you want to try it the animal way. The way that failed.

Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#17

Post by jobeirne »

maxklein wrote: post #16
jobeirne wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health care is not a human right. It is not my obligation to make sure that you survive.

Humans are successful because we don't leave our dead, sick, wounded or crippled behind. We won because, instead of doing like other animals and letting the weak or old die alone, we continue to help them and learn from them. We help other humans who are too weak to be helped. It's part of our primal human nature. When you say that it's not your obligation to make sure I survive, you are saying you want to try it the…

Wrong. Humans are successful (when we are successful) because we use our inherent ingenuity to serve our individual ends and wants without infringing on those ends and wants of others. Maybe these desires include caring for others, which is often the case, but requiring someone to care for another is to strip that person of their natural freedom.

Learn to make distinctions between what is common and what is general.

Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#18

Post by tptacek »

anamax wrote: post #10
notauser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your $600bn figure is correct... US incomplete health care is $600bn/305m people = $2,000 per person. UK national health service is $120bn/60m people = $2,000 per person. The US needs a really hard look at why it is getting such a bad deal. You already have socialised medicine (anyone can go to the ER and it gets amortised over private insurance patients - essentially taxing the rich) but that cost is on top of th…

Actually, everyone in the US is covered, there are just different plans. The gap is wrt insurance. The uninsured have "free" (read taxpayer supported) options. (Yes, there are treatments that aren't covered in those options, just as there are in every system, including those in "universal healthcare" systems.) Note that about half of the insured are insured through US govt programs. Interestingly enough, the cost of…

The uninsured do not have "free" options. The "taxpayer supported" mechanism kicks in only after you've been bankrupted. There's a difference between uninsured and broke.

Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#19

Post by maxklein »

jobeirne wrote: post #17
maxklein wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are successful because we don't leave our dead, sick, wounded or crippled behind. We won because, instead of doing like other animals and letting the weak or old die alone, we continue to help them and learn from them. We help other humans who are too weak to be helped. It's part of our primal human nature. When you say that it's not your obligation to make sure I survive, you are saying you want to try it the…

Wrong. Humans are successful (when we are successful) because we use our inherent ingenuity to serve our individual ends and wants without infringing on those ends and wants of others. Maybe these desires include caring for others, which is often the case, but requiring someone to care for another is to strip that person of their natural freedom. Learn to make distinctions between what is common and what is general.

You have a very fundamental misunderstanding of biology. Really fundamental. You think a desire such as "caring for others" is somehow a personal choice? Or that God implanted it in us? Caring for others is a biological neccessity of our type of animal - it's why we live, it's why life continues.

There is no such thing as natural freedom. We are born in a collective, we die in a collective and we are nothing without our collective. Humans and monkeys are group first, individual second, and have always been that way. That's why people form 'teams' and have a 'group of friends', have 'families'. It's all small groups which together form larger groups, and the overall aim of each group is to make itself survive, but at the very top, the overall aim is to make the entire human race survive.

Don't believe you are special. That you have 'natural freedoms'. That you have some inherent ingenuity. That's just sillyness.

What would you do with all your ingenuity if you were the only person on earth? Humans have this illusion of being individualistic, and that they work for themselves first. It's not true. People work for the entire society, because without other humans, nobody can survive, no matter how 'ingenious' he is.

Re: Obama Tax Plan a Frontal Assault on Entrepreneurs

#20

Post by tptacek »

The person who wrote this article has never tried to obtain independent health insurance.

For a family of 4, private health insurance with a typical deductable costs something like $1200 per month. That's half a reasonable mortgage, or 3 times the monthly cost of two parents each commuting 50 miles a day on $4 gas, or 3 concurrent car lease payments. Over 60% of Americans today are covered by their employers, who in addition to accessing lower-rate group plans, cover some or all of this expense.

But that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that out of the 163,000,000 people that would need to switch to private health insurance in these schemes, a huge portion of them will be unable to access a competitive plan. Private health insurers can and do decline coverage for a myriad of reasons. My daughter had a (drug reaction) seizure when she was 3. NO COVERAGE. A friend's wife had a minor women's health issue. NO COVERAGE.

Advocates for private health insurance are quick to point out that they'll work with states to set up "last-resort" health insurance coverage for these people. Those advocates don't understand what the word "competition" means. Those "last-resort" plans already exist (at least in Illinois, Michigan, and California), but they're far more expensive than Blue Cross or United. Insurance works efficiently by creating pools of shared risk. What happens to the plans that get all the "risky" people?

With a couple obvious exceptions, my sense is that no country loves its health insurance system. Canadians bitch about theirs, British people bitch about theirs. But our system is an international joke. We pay more than everyone else, we shift the burden of those payments to the least convenient places in our economy, the average patient receives poorer care, and we still manage to bankrupt people with the system at random intervals.

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